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[gentle music]
♪ ♪
‐ Eight scientists are about to be sealed
in an eight‐story airtight terrarium.
‐ Shelley Taylor Morgan is standing by at the site
at Oracle, Arizona. Hi, Shelley.
‐ Morning.
What you're seeing here is the doorway
that the eight Biospherians are going to walk into
and be sealed into for two years.
‐ Two years.
‐ The futuristic‐looking steel and glass structure
is touted as an environmental laboratory
and prototype for colonies in space.
‐ They'll spend two years in their prefab paradise
trying to support themselves
so that the rest of us can learn
what it would be like if we had to move
into a portable world on another planet.
‐ Its designers say it's science.
Its detractors say it's a tourist attraction
run by questionable characters.
♪ ♪
‐ It's starting to happen, as you can see.
There they are...
‐ There they go. ‐ Saying goodbye.
Doesn't this feel like they're going to the Moon?
‐ Well, I mean, yeah, I'm expecting
a blast‐off or something. [laughs]
No, it is. I'm getting chills as we sit here and watch this,
because it is really‐‐ ‐ It really is.
‐ You know, we may look back upon this in a number of years
and say that was where it all began.
[warm music]
♪ ♪
‐ The experimenter enters the experiment
in the grand tradition.
‐ This is an incredible moment. The future is here.
♪ ♪
[gentle music]
♪ ♪
‐ It started in San Francisco.
♪ ♪
I was 17.
I was on my way to a rehearsal,
locked the door of the apartment,
and there was an older man locking the door
of his apartment just next door.
♪ ♪
I'd never seen this man.
He said, "What are you doing?"
and I pulled out this book, and I said,
"Well, actually, I want to do what's in this book."
He said, "What's that?"
so I described
this slim novella called "Mount Analogue"
by a French writer.
His name is Rene Daumal.
"Mount Analogue" is about a group of people
who decided to land on an island
that didn't exist on any map, and I loved this book,
and I wanted to do what those people did.
He said, "Forget the book. That's what I'm going to do."
I said, "Well, as long as there's theater and dance."
He said, "Okay."
And this was John Allen.
That night, he said he was calling all of his friends
in New Mexico to come to San Francisco,
so a number of us moved in together on my 18th birthday.
‐ I had left New England because I didn't want
to get married in New England
and be the typical New England wife,
have typical New England kids, and live that lifestyle.
Wonderful people, but I didn't‐‐that wasn't me.
I was waiting to figure out what the heck I was gonna do,
and I was desperate, I was panicking.
John Allen called me up and said,
"Get your butt here quick.
This is where it's happening planetarily."
‐ There was a coworker that I had at Lawrence Laboratory
who said, "Well, go check out John Allen in San Francisco."
1967 in San Francisco, there was all this, you know,
people doing things together in groups,
and that was interesting to me, so I went.
["Something In The Air" by Thunderclap Newman]
♪ ♪
‐ People were doing all sorts of things at that time.
‐ ♪ Call out ♪
‐ There were a lot of people
starting collectives, communes,
and we wanted to last,
so we didn't take drugs. That would kind of blow it.
‐ ♪ Sooner or later ♪
♪ Because the revolution's here ♪
‐ If one wants to make a contribution to history,
you notice those moments of opening,
and that's when you act.
♪ ♪
‐ ♪ And you know that it's right ♪
‐ We sat down in the living room.
What is it that we're going to do?
Well, we could do theater, we could do art,
we could do business, we could do science, we could do‐‐
and then somebody said, "Let's do all of it."
Okay.
[string music]
♪ ♪
‐ We set up the Theater of All Possibilities.
That was our first project together.
♪ ♪
‐ The theater engages the entire organism,
movement, thought, emotion.
It gives you insights into yourself,
building a foundation from which we could go on
and do other projects.
♪ ♪
‐ I wanted to document what we were doing.
It was history. It was important.
So I taught myself 16mm filmmaking.
I did a lot of handheld, shaky‐‐
well, I was forced to have
a certain kind of a style as a filmmaker,
because of lack of funds, and lack of knowledge also.
♪ ♪
I loved to get close‐ups and faces.
You know, it was like you're catching
the essence of a person.
♪ ♪
‐ I'd met very charismatic people before,
I'd met geniuses before,
but there's no one like John Allen.
It was a feeling of rightness that, yes,
this is what I want to do. This is a person
I want to go on this voyage into the unknown with.
I love him. I love him.
I still love him.
I wouldn't say it was a‐‐ yes, it was a relationship.
Yeah, it was a very particular kind of relationship
which was based on friendship.
‐ He's 12 years older than I am,
and we did have a relationship,
extremely platonic in kind of a strange way.
But, you know, I was very fond of him,
and I guess he was fond of me,
and then suddenly, he asked me to marry him.
Oh, okay. [laughs]
That sounds good. Yeah, so anyway, I did.
When we got married, it wasn't
for the normal sort of married life type of thing.
It was‐‐we were married to make a project.
[ethereal music]
♪ ♪
‐ Being born in Oklahoma, in those days,
Oklahoma was still a frontier state.
Frontiers are very uncertain. That's by definition, right?
A frontier is where two or more cultures
are interfacing with each other,
and so it is dramatic, always. What is gonna happen?
♪ ♪
I worked at a meatpacking plant
and did union organizing, worked as a metallurgist,
was in the US Army Corps of Engineers,
got an MBA at Harvard,
and I wandered around,
thinking about what I wanted to do.
I knew that would have to be something unusual.
[andante music]
I was fundamentally interested in transformation
of where we're ordinarily at,
of what the human potential could be.
♪ ♪
‐ I think we'd had it with San Francisco.
The scene there became corrupted by commercialism.
♪ ♪
We just decided we wanted to have our own place.
♪ ♪
We found a beautiful piece of land
that wouldn't cost much,
and where we could build a ranch.
♪ ♪
We called ourself Synergists.
♪ ♪
‐ We needed to become more directly connected
with growing food and not just being consumers.
♪ ♪
We were workaholics,
running the ranch and the theater.
♪ ♪
‐ Johnny was a very good leader,
and he instilled that.
If you feel that you've been given permission to go do
any kind of a task,
no matter‐‐almost no matter what it is, you'll do it.
[soft vocal music]
♪ ♪
‐ Our group was inspired
by a lot of different thinkers.
♪ ♪
The "Whole Earth Catalog,"
that beautiful cover looking at the planet as a whole.
That was really thrilling.
The works of William S. Burroughs.
He was seeing that there was a countdown
to ecological disaster,
themes that we were interested in.
♪ ♪
We'd read "Spaceship Earth" by Buckminster Fuller.
‐ Bucky Fuller had pioneered the idea of a geodesic dome.
I was handed the task to build one.
♪ ♪
This is a way of learning by doing,
to be pushed to the limits of your skills.
♪ ♪
The dome symbolized the unity
that reflected the values of the ranch.
‐ The struts of a ball have tremendous strength together,
but individually,
they don't have that kind of cohesive strength.
♪ ♪
That's how we worked.
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
♪ ♪
[spacey music]
♪ ♪
[laughter]
[indistinct chatter and noises]
♪ ♪
‐ It was October 1969 that I arrived at the ranch.
They happened, in fact,
to be in the middle of a theater rehearsal.
The door burst through, and 20 to 25 people
with really high energy entered the room.
It was kind of like a good omen.
It was like I'm stepping into something totally new.
I was born in Brooklyn, Flatbush,
so I'm quite a New York kid.
I worked as a taxi driver.
I was a proofreader at Time Life Books.
I was a court reporter for a while.
Oh, and a social worker.
I really was looking for something different.
♪ ♪
I was such an urbanite,
people would say, "Pick that 2"x4" up,"
and I would think to myself, "Two by four.
What could that refer to?"
♪ ♪
Johnny said, "Everybody here
"needs to be in charge of something.
"We try to run this as a work democracy.
What do you want to be in charge of?"
and I thought, "I haven't a clue."
Johnny came up with the idea
of an enterprise of having an orchard.
I said, "I'm on for that."
I really fell in love with soil, and trees,
and really keeping that connection
with the whole natural world.
♪ ♪
The ranch was the first step
in learning about sustainability.
♪ ♪
We saw an opportunity.
We could make sustainable,
viable projects around the world.
♪ ♪
[kettle whistling]
‐ Here we were, not that long
into making the ranch a sustainable place,
and the gardens were going, and it was all happening.
Well, I think maybe Johnny thought
it was all too successful now,
and that we had to move to the next realm.
[upbeat music]
♪ ♪
‐ The magic of the entire enterprise
was to always increase the challenge.
♪ ♪
‐ Johnny actually said,
"I think we should build a ship."
‐ We wanted to go someplace
where we certainly had never been before.
It was a new era for our projects.
It would go planetary.
‐ We went to my family home in Berkeley,
where we set up our living space
so that we could build a ship on the shore in Oakland.
♪ ♪
‐ We started out with smaller projects.
The answers are easier,
and eventually, you have to do very complex things.
♪ ♪
‐ We thought, "If we can build a ship,
an oceangoing ship, we could do anything."
♪ ♪
‐ Our ship is called the "Heraclitus."
The construction of the ship was pretty much a performance.
♪ ♪
‐ Margaret Augustine
is the primary architect of our projects.
Margaret, who was 19 or 20, kind of rose to the occasion
when we were building the "Heraclitus."
Margaret says,
"I'm going to run the construction site."
♪ ♪
Freddy Dempster learned celestial navigation.
[pensive music]
♪ ♪
‐ In a relatively benign setting
like Synergia Ranch,
you can make mistakes,
and you learn that you made a mistake,
but in this case,
your life depends on these things working.
♪ ♪
‐ The day of the launch was very dramatic,
because we had this high tide.
And people had been working 24‐hour shifts.
♪ ♪
We had booked a tow boat to pull us into the water.
We built it, and in theory, it would float,
but we didn't know what was gonna happen.
♪ ♪
‐ And then there's a jolt.
It was just slipping out there.
And we were moving.
♪ ♪
Suddenly, the bow went up. [exhales]
Like that. Yeah.
♪ ♪
‐ We sailed out from San Francisco Bay,
sailed out under the Golden Gate Bridge,
and when we got out in the ocean,
the waves were huge, literally 25 to 30 feet high.
♪ ♪
‐ Nothing was tied down the way it should've been.
The radar broke and fell in the ocean.
‐ We certainly were learning quickly, yes.
‐ And for some reason, I wasn't afraid.
And I don't think anybody was afraid.
♪ ♪
It was one of those transitional,
transformative moments, indeed. Well, now we were free.
[gentle music]
♪ ♪
‐ There's a strong nomadic nature
to our projects.
‐ Well, we toured around the world.
♪ ♪
‐ You know, I'm a broke Oklahoma boy.
How am I gonna support all this stuff?
[laughs]
‐ How did you support it? ‐ Just enterprising.
♪ ♪
‐ We weren't a commune. We were a corporation.
♪ ♪
We started businesses around the world
in order to make money.
We had to survive. We had to pay for everything.
‐ We were quite capitalistic.
‐ You know, we were never,
in any of our projects, into profit maximization,
but without sustainable, viable economics,
these projects can't last.
♪ ♪
It's unusual to find business partners
who were willing to think long‐term.
‐ Ed Bass was an integral part of our businesses
around the planet.
♪ ♪
‐ He really liked this sense of exploration,
sense of adventure.
Ed Bass is a billionaire
from a prominent family in Fort Worth, Texas.
The Basses‐‐ their money was in oil.
♪ ♪
We formed a joint venture with Ed.
‐ And we had a particular kind of a deal with him.
He would put forward
the capital to buy certain properties,
and then we would go there
and work to enhance their value,
and make something‐‐ something amazing.
So we built a hotel in Kathmandu.
♪ ♪
We opened an art gallery in London.
♪ ♪
‐ I spent ten years of my life taking care of our land
in the Australian outback.
♪ ♪
‐ We started touring theater.
♪ ♪
‐ We played on every continent,
including Antarctica.
♪ ♪
‐ The idea to start projects in different biomes
was to understand
the whole planet experientially.
♪ ♪
‐ Small groups are the engines of change.
♪ ♪
Johnny provided the ideas that coalesced our whole group
into doing collective action.
♪ ♪
Under his leadership,
we could achieve things in common action
that we could not otherwise achieve.
♪ ♪
‐ I lost my dad when I was 16.
[string music]
I often institute father figures...
♪ ♪
And I think I had a projection on John.
I may still have it. [laughs]
I won't say I'm over it.
He was very charismatic, very dynamic,
exploding with energy.
He was a fallible human being.
John can be tempestuous, big time,
but John is definitely a genius.
♪ ♪
‐ To explore the history
of the planet Earth and its future,
and to examine man's relation to the planet Earth
and his future, the Institute of Eco‐Technics
invited outstanding scientists,
artists of the avant‐garde,
explorers, and managers of our present time
to a four‐day conference at their facility
in the south of France.
This film is the record of those shared investigations
and experiences,
fears and hopes, ignorance and knowledge
of the mystery and patterns of planet Earth.
[dramatic string music]
♪ ♪
‐ We were doing conferences,
and we held them in different parts of the world.
They started with specific biomes,
a conference on deserts, on oceans, on jungles.
♪ ♪
Pretty soon, we ran out of biomes,
so we did the planet Earth.
‐ Dr. Alexander King sounds a note of warning.
We are living in an unusually warm period,
but small overall temperature changes
lead to ice age glaciation.
Population increase concentrated
in enormous cities,
destruction of natural environment,
and increasing disparity
between rich and poor countries
is leading to a catastrophe,
yet most of the destruction is caused by human ignorance.
‐ Changes were happening on an enormous scale.
We were actually in danger
of destroying the planet as we know it.
‐ And we realized that we had to do something.
‐ Thank you very much.
Any idea that can be conceived in our time
can be executed in our time.
It's a hell of a mantra.
‐ Phil Hawes, our resident architect,
came up with an adobe spaceship.
The idea of making an enclosed mini‐world
rose from that moment.
‐ And in this biospheric bank are thousands of species
of life and eight people.
They better be adventurers, they better be artists,
and they better be scientists.
‐ We loved this idea
that when you start to think of colonies in space,
suddenly you are thinking of sustainable living on Earth.
♪ ♪
‐ I think the whole project‐‐ I mean, I really liked
that it was science fiction without the fiction.
♪ ♪
This idea is like "Silent Running."
That was an incredible film.
To see this floating world,
and, you know, the guy taking care of the wilderness area,
and the little rabbits hopping.
‐ How are you today? Huh? Feeling good?
‐ Here is this capsule of life from Earth
that's being nurtured and kept alive
and the guy who's in love with the system,
which I totally identified.
You know, and of course, the very poignant thing,
that this is the last refuge of Earth life.
‐ What about the forests?
You don't think anyone should care about these forests?
What's gonna happen if these forests
and all this incredible beauty is lost for all time?
[pensive music]
♪ ♪
‐ Nobody was building a long‐term life system
to go into space. No one was doing that.
We thought, "Here's a niche. Let's go for it."
♪ ♪
When you even visualize a colony,
off the planet,
suddenly you're rethinking what's possible.
♪ ♪
‐ Some of us are born
with far better naturalist sensitivities
than interpersonal sensitivities.
So, yeah,
I usually get along with plants
more than I do most people.
♪ ♪
John said, "We're going into the space race."
I said, "What?" He said,
"Yeah, we're gonna build this thing called the Biosphere
"that's a prelude to extraterrestrial biospheres,
and so, we want you to design the desert."
♪ ♪
I was working
at the University of Arizona Desert Laboratory,
and well, you know, compared to the normal academic career,
compare that to launch humanity
into an extraterrestrial evolutionary trajectory?
It was visionary.
[optimistic music]
♪ ♪
‐ If we're gonna go to Mars and the Moon,
we'd better know how to make a biosphere.
♪ ♪
‐ A nice, simple definition that I like of a biosphere
is a virtually closed system with plants and animals
and atmospheres all inside.
If we're gonna build
the first human‐designed biospheric system,
we're gonna make it beautiful.
♪ ♪
We're gonna put in a mini‐rain forest,
a desert, a savanna, an ocean with a living coral reef.
It would be populated by hundreds
of carefully‐selected plants and animal species,
including eight people.
♪ ♪
We called the project Biosphere 2,
because we wanted people to say,
"Well, where is Biosphere 1?"
Biosphere 1 is the Earth.
[serene music]
No one really knew what we'd need
if we're ever gonna go into space on a permanent basis.
♪ ♪
‐ We don't see how big the process is.
‐ John Allen had suggested, "Well, the whole point of this
"is not to do rigorous science from the get‐go.
"The point of this is to learn how to make a biosphere
"that can support human occupants
"in an extraterrestrial setting.
"It won't work the first time.
"It probably won't work for the first several times,
but each time, we're likely to learn more, faster."
‐ There were huge numbers of scientific consultants.
The University of Arizona,
the Smithsonian Marine Systems Lab,
and the New York Botanic Garden.
‐ And are we gonna put any engineering devices...
‐ Biosphere 2 was gonna build
on the work of all of our projects.
‐ Agriculture, design,
engineering, technology, and ecology.
All the things that we had done together.
♪ ♪
‐ It was a massive construction project.
♪ ♪
‐ And these were the people that could do it.
[upbeat music]
♪ ♪
‐ When we were building the "Heraclitus,"
Margaret Augustine ran the construction site.
Now, she was the CEO, and co‐architect
of Biosphere 2.
When you're doing something
that no one has ever done before, you learn by doing.
‐ Without a project of this undertaking,
you wouldn't really be able to feasibly start a colony,
say, on the Moon or Mars.
♪ ♪
‐ Marie Harding was the chief financial officer.
‐ We had budgets.
The final cost was $200 million.
That's‐‐for that, that is like peanuts.
It was quite corporate. I even wore nail polish.
[laughs]
‐ And also, of course, there was Ed Bass.
♪ ♪
‐ Edward Bass, the second‐oldest
of the four Bass brothers, by some estimates,
the fourth wealthiest family in the United States.
John Allen's ideas and Edward Bass's money
have spawned a number of worldwide ventures.
♪ ♪
‐ Creating Biosphere 2 as a business
made sense for several reasons.
For one, we thought it could be very profitable.
‐ Ed would invest a huge amount of money,
figuring there would be no payback in the short term,
but when we go to space,
Biosphere 2 would yield
enormous technological spinoffs
that then he could license and people would pay him for.
‐ Ed was also passionate about ecology.
‐ All you've got to do is watch his face light up
when he talks about it.
‐ From the ecological point of view,
man is very much a part of the problem.
I was able to put these together
in my own personal interest
and really become involved in ecological matters.
‐ We'd been thinking about the human relationship
with the environment for decades.
Biosphere 2 is totally
an awesome new kind of approach
to studying
and coming up with solutions to Earth problems.
[orchestral music]
♪ ♪
‐ We have, in the last year, put out a paper
that said we had a program for Biospherian candidates.
‐ We had maybe 15 or so people,
Biospherians in training,
and the selection was gonna be made from that group.
‐ There wasn't a type of person.
It wasn't eight clones that showed up.
This is the kind of human being who would do this.
It was‐‐ that wasn't predictable.
‐ I'm Jane Pointer. I'm a Biospherian candidate.
‐ Well, my nickname's Laser.
I like to be in the middle of the action.
I like to get things done.
‐ Well, I know that the eight people who go in
will come out different people,
and come out as a group of people
probably incomparable to any other group in history.
‐ Many people say "Well," you know, "Why?
Why are you getting locked up in the Biosphere?"
I don't call it‐‐
I don't think of it as being locked up in the Biosphere.
In fact, I think of it as locking everybody else out.
[laughs]
‐ We looked for who are the free thinkers,
so I automatically eliminated
all the people that follow people.
[general hubbub]
‐ Two!
‐ Okay, go down and switch to the next partner.
Do the‐‐appear and disappear emotionally,
the way you were doing physically before.
‐ John Allen was a brilliant, charismatic leader,
because he simply met the emotional needs.
He was a mind musician.
He really knew what people needed,
and tried to motivate them by supplying it,
or withholding it sometimes.
I thought part of John Allen's genius
was helping people to realize it's all theater.
[energetic music]
♪ ♪
‐ I don't know that I ever had the feeling
that we couldn't pull it off.
I knew we could pull it off.
Maybe that was naive, but maybe not.
‐ To prove this, we thought it was necessary
to build a model.
‐ We built the test module.
Let's have all the Biospherian candidates go in there.
‐ What's going on today is testing of the systems
that we expect to use in Biosphere 2.
This will be the longest closure with a person
in a totally enclosed environment where all the food,
the water, the air, the waste is recycled within that system.
‐ This is my daily exercise, as well as harvesting.
‐ Botanist Linda Leigh was sealed
inside a test module for a three‐week stay.
‐ You open the door, you close the airlock behind you,
and suddenly, you understand that you are in relationship,
I mean, intimate metabolic relationship,
with everything inside there.
‐ Everybody is anxiously awaiting for the moment
when you will step through that door.
♪ ♪
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
‐ Preparations for interplanetary travel
have begun near Tucson.
‐ As Tina Naughton tells us,
spaceships aren't involved yet, only determination.
‐ These chosen eight are about to step
into an airtight city called the Biosphere 2.
The crew, chosen from scientific experts,
will live inside the enclosed world for two years.
Only video and the telephone will link them to the outside.
‐ They are the darlings of the new age,
protectors of the planet,
pioneers blazing a trail for outer space.
They are Biospherians.
‐ No one's ever done this before.
No one's ever built,
or lived in, or managed a total closed system.
‐ It's an ethnically diverse group,
each chosen for their science expertise.
[spacey music]
‐ It's a true research project,
with the eight humans
as much a subject of the research
as researchers themselves.
‐ I got a phone call. Margaret‐‐she said,
"What do you think about the idea of joining the crew?"
And I don't think there was any pause
between the end of her sentence and me saying yes.
‐ Am I gonna go stir‐crazy over two years?
Have I really brought in enough sneakers,
and toothbrushes, and books, and videos,
and tape cassettes to keep my intellectual mind happy?
I suppose emotionally, that's gonna be the challenge.
‐ I feel grateful to be given the opportunity
to carry on the work
that we've been doing over the last five years,
to be part of an experiment
that is both scientifically challenging
and physically remarkably beautiful.
‐ I was invited to come up to the biosphere,
and I thought, "Well,
"this is a great, bright group of people.
"They're really into what they're doing.
"They're exciting. They're excited.
"They're doing cool things.
They're wacky, and I fit right in."
♪ ♪
I was always the girl in the classroom
who took care of the fish. I did projects
for all the science fairs when I was little.
Mostly, people, I felt at that time,
people didn't like me very much.
I was living in Tucson in the mid‐'80s,
and I was kind of in my "save the world" type of headspace,
and a friend said,
"Linda, you can't do it all by yourself."
And that was‐‐ it was really a moment,
one of those aha moments.
When I joined the group, it was a magnetic center.
You know, it just kind of pulled me in.
We all got sent out to different places
around the world to collect the plants and species.
[ethereal music]
♪ ♪
To build an ecosystem from all of the pieces
is just a big, huge puzzle.
♪ ♪
‐ It was Biblical.
It was filling Noah's Ark, essentially.
♪ ♪
‐ Deciding what to include has not been easy.
For example...
‐ When we made the decision to put in something
like a hummingbird,
you know how many flowers a day a hummingbird needs?
The best we could find was 1,400 fuchsia flowers.
♪ ♪
‐ An important part of this was making a beautiful world,
making a Garden of Eden.
♪ ♪
I loved being totally absorbed in this.
♪ ♪
I didn't need anything more.
♪ ♪
‐ Ready? And action.
‐ Hello there. I'm Rue McClanahan,
and I'm here in Oracle, Arizona, at Biosphere 2,
where one of the most adventurous and important‐‐
boy, this is rough terrain. [laughs]
‐ That was nice, very nice, Rue.
‐ It feels‐‐
‐ And, action. ‐ Hello.
I'm Rue McClanahan,
and I'm here in Oracle, Arizona,
at Biosphere 2, where one
of the most adventurous and important experiments
in human existence has begun.
Et cetera, et cetera.
‐ Good, that was perfect, like, that was perfect.
[music]
‐ People like both wonder
and sensation. [laughs]
I mean, so there's an appetite and an audience for both.
No, I was not a publicist.
We didn't even have a press department.
We had no press release.
‐ They want to just do it down at that spot...
‐ Regards to a photo opportunity.
‐ And they've got enough time, so let's just go and do it.
It never entered our head that it was going to be
something grand and spectacular,
it was going to blow everyone's socks off.
It started to ignite a lot of interest.
Margaret and John decided that they should hire
a professional PR firm from LA.
‐ The locals came in. They reported faithfully,
and then my job was to leapfrog up
to the national and international,
the networks.
Here we had this marvelous structure,
and we had to do it right. We had to beam them up somehow.
‐ This live news event package will include
worldwide press coverage.
Biosphere 2 is an idea
that has intrigued Hollywood for years.
Celebrities will walk us through the diverse biomes.
‐ I am a big fan of everything
that has to do with the environment.
‐ They'll present profiles of the bionauts,
who've journeyed the world over,
gathering what will live in their new environment.
Network presidents agree, environmental programming
is a must for the '90s.
‐ Definitely went viral. It was a global curiosity.
‐ Biosphere 2. ‐ Biosphere 2.
‐ Biosphera dos. ‐ Biosphere 2.
‐ What an exciting assignment.
‐ I'm telling you, it was so incredible,
and I just came back from an ocean, a desert,
a marsh, a tropic zone, a savanna.
‐ Ladies and gentlemen, here is the president and CEO
of Space Biosphere Ventures
and five of the eight Biospherians.
Welcome them, please.
Okay, have you got the picture?
Is this something? I'm telling you.
‐ People wanted to be enchanted.
The notion of eight human beings
being separated from life, from the availability of food.
And I think it tapped into something in people.
♪ ♪
‐ I had trepidation that the media attention
was too much, too soon,
that we weren't quite ready for that.
‐ No air, water, or other materials
will pass the airtight glass boundaries
that enclose them.
‐ But you get no new air at all from the outside.
‐ That's right. What we put in when we enter in March
is what we will have in 100 years.
‐ You don't cheat, and take any air
from the outside environment into the Biosphere
for the entire two‐year experiment.
‐ There won't be any cheating for 100 years,
not just the two years, for the 100 years.
‐ We were making it up as we went.
This was a group that was sort of avant‐garde.
‐ Today we're showing my designs on two models.
It'll work well for television against the foliage,
the rain forest, the desert with the beige tone.
That's why I believe in clear red.
[methodical waltz music]
♪ ♪
‐ Two of the Biospherians are outside Biosphere 2
this morning in Oracle, Arizona.
They are botanist Linda Leigh, and the team's only physician,
Dr. Roy Walford. Good morning to both of you,
and what in the heck are you wearing?
‐ Good morning. Well, these are our suits,
and uniforms that we wear
on state occasions like this one.
‐ Oh, I see. You look like something
out of "Star Trek" to me.
‐ Along with the debate over whether this is science,
or what critics call ecological entertainment,
there are some darker questions.
The idea for the Biosphere was not born
among a group of scientists. It was born on a commune.
In fact, some of those who lived there
say it had the trappings of a cult.
The questions center around John Allen,
the man considered the driving force
behind Biosphere 2.
Three former residents have told ABC News
that Allen preached a blend of ecology and doom.
‐ There are accounts of how the commune members took part
in strange costumed rituals.
A Biosphere 2 employee told NBC News
the people running the project
are an odd group of individuals.
He insisted on having his identity protected.
‐ They don't really strike me as scientists,
more like a group of people thrown together
and given a role to play.
‐ The appetite for sensationalism
sells papers.
Describing complex projects doesn't sell papers.
‐ Did you feel attacked? ‐ Well, I was attacked,
but I didn't feel that I was. [laughs]
Here is your brainwashing cult leader.
[laughs]
♪ ♪
‐ I'm sure John felt a huge amount of discomfort
at having his accustomed role
as director of the drama threatened.
‐ Right, grab that...
‐ Frankly, I don't know any human organization
that does an innovative startup
that doesn't have cult‐like aspects,
especially in the corporate sector.
We are hardwired to create cults
in the innovative phase of an organization.
‐ Quick, the press is waiting!
‐ [indistinct] a new world and future.
‐ From here to Mars! ‐ How exciting.
‐ Smooth sailing. ‐ Younger every day.
[laughter]
‐ Before we went in, we wrote a play
called "The Wrong Stuff."
‐ You must notify me at least 24 hours in advance
of any water going either into or out of the system.
‐ Our play was everything that could go wrong
in the Biosphere went wrong,
thinking that, okay, if we did it on stage,
then we don't have to do it in the Biosphere.
‐ [all chanting] Flush one through the system.
‐ Lunch.
‐ French fries.
[laughter]
‐ ♪ We got the wrong stuff ♪
♪ We got the wrong stuff, we got the ♪
♪ Got the wrong, wrong stuff ♪
♪ And we're wrong ♪ ‐ ♪ We're wrong ♪
‐ ♪ We're wrong ♪
‐ We're wrong. ‐ Yeah, we're wrong!
[ominous music]
♪ ♪
‐ How can you prepare yourself for something
that you don't even know what it is?
That's what an expedition is.
It's a journey into the unknown.
‐ We can be a threat to our biosphere,
play a destructive role, or we can be stewards,
contributing to the reciprocal maintenance
of natural ecological processes.
♪ ♪
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
‐ Push, push, push, push.
‐ Let me‐‐let me close it, please.
Be careful with it. Okay, please?
Yeah, I need to close it. [indistinct]
‐ Okay.
‐ [indistinct] Okay.
‐ Let her do it. Let her do it.
Okay. ‐ She do it?
‐ Here. Get back.
‐ [laughs]
[cheers and applause]
[gentle music]
‐ It was such a relief when the cameras were finally off.
♪ ♪
‐ I went into the wilderness area,
which was the area that I was managing.
♪ ♪
And I rained, I turned the rain on.
♪ ♪
It was just to wash all the air, thinking,
"Okay, let's just wash all this other stuff
out of here and begin anew."
♪ ♪
‐ The reality that it was just the eight of us
in this amazing new world
started to hit.
♪ ♪
You can think and think and think and think about,
"Oh, I'm going away for two years,"
but suddenly, wow, we're here.
♪ ♪
You know, we were pioneers.
We were the first Biospherians.
There was also this pride.
Hey, you've given us a new world to, you know,
figure out how to live in,
and we're gonna grow up with this thing.
We're gonna take care of it.
["This Must Be The Place" by Talking Heads playing]
♪ ♪
‐ ♪ Home is where I want to be ♪
♪ Pick me up and turn me round ♪
‐ Sally Silverstone‐‐ she used to joke,
"I managed a mental hospital in India.
"You know, that's nothing compared to managing
eight Biospherians."
‐ I was a huge space nut when I was a kid.
I loved the idea of colonizing other planets.
I loved science fiction movies
where people were all living under glass domes,
and, you know, growing their own food.
I was really interested to see if we were going to be able
to feed ourselves off this tiny piece of land.
‐ Taber MacCallum, the wunderkind of Biosphere 2.
‐ Taber is a genius, so he brought that to the table,
but he also really knew a lot about closed systems
from his experience in diving,
so he did a lot of the work involved
with testing of the atmosphere and soils.
♪ ♪
‐ Jane Pointer, our field manager of the agriculture.
‐ Jane was wonderful with the animal systems.
She took care of our chickens and our goats,
our wonderful goats.
♪ ♪
‐ Taber and Jane,
and Gay, Laser‐‐ they were couples,
you know, before they came in.
Laser, he appears, and he can fix anything.
‐ So he knew that thing like the back of his hand.
‐ Gay Alling, the marine biologist.
‐ She had put this little ocean together
against all odds.
♪ ♪
‐ Roy Walford was our medical officer.
He was a great scientist,
looking at the effect of diet on the aging process.
‐ Each week, Dr. Roy Walford swims two miles
and then runs another ten.
You probably wouldn't guess he was 60 years old.
What's more, Dr. Walford says at that age,
his life is only about half over.
120 years, he says,
is his life expectancy, maybe more.
‐ Roy was your archetypal mad scientist‐
cum‐avant‐garde theater person and explorer,
rolled up into one.
‐ ♪ Nothing ♪
♪ ♪
‐ We were all working together
because we all had this common goal,
and it was something we all really believed in.
♪ ♪
[somber orchestral music]
♪ ♪
‐ My absolute joy inside Biosphere 2
was to get up really, really early in the morning,
to just go out onto the little balcony overlooked
our agricultural system.
Very early in the morning,
I'd make myself a cup of mint tea
and just watch the sun come up over the Biosphere.
It was absolutely phenomenal.
♪ ♪
[chimes ringing]
♪ ♪
[indistinct speech]
‐ [laughs]
[light music]
♪ ♪
‐ We have to take care of our Biosphere,
because it's gonna take care of us.
♪ ♪
Everything was being recycled. Everything was being replaced.
The nutrients were all being put back into the same system.
♪ ♪
‐ Everyone was super aware that Biosphere 2
was literally our lifeboat.
We had to manage carefully the cycles
of carbon dioxide and oxygen,
because our greatest fear was that CO2
was going to get so high
that we'd be driven out of the biosphere.
♪ ♪
‐ I loved seeing
the consequences of my actions right away.
If I picked a sweet potato out of the soil,
there would be a poof of carbon dioxide.
We could kind of get a good feeling
for what our impact was on the atmosphere.
‐ I have a personal relationship
with every single plant in the rain forest,
in the savanna, in the desert, either having touched it
because I collected it, or grew it, or accessioned it,
or photographed it, planted it, propagated it.
I have connections with the whole world of life in here.
[warm brass music]
♪ ♪
‐ Roy was filming continually.
♪ ♪
Roy's filming of life
inside Biosphere 2 is tremendously valuable data.
‐ We were learning the most phenomenal amount
from that system.
‐ We actually had 64 separate research projects going on.
There were over 1,000 sensors,
tons and tons of data.
We were monitoring critical vectors like trace gases
and what was happening with the atmosphere.
Everything accelerated.
The cycles were literally
thousands of times faster in Biosphere 2.
‐ I'm making measurements in the analytical lab
so that we can better understand
the biogeochemical cycles
that are occurring in Biosphere 2.
‐ With the conventional scientific thinking,
you had hypotheses,
but we did a lot of what we did
based on more of a different way of doing science.
The idea was, here's all this stuff, and what's gonna happen?
‐ The planet urgently needs to study biospheres.
This is the first laboratory.
If we can transplant a coral reef
and keep it healthy,
if we can run a farm and not pollute the atmosphere
and the water, recycle all the nutrients,
there are huge lessons to be learned here.
‐ Okay, I'd like to welcome everybody to Biosphere 2.
‐ Come on in. ‐ Thank you.
‐ All right, thank you.
‐ That is Mark Nelson.
Mark Nelson.
He's the communication officer inside.
[upbeat music]
‐ People started showing up, wanting to see everything,
and they wanted tours.
They'd heard about this amazing place.
So we set up a visitor center.
We were hoping that that would pay for a great deal of it,
which it didn't.
♪ ♪
‐ Where do we get the T‐shirts?
‐ What we're upset is that
there's no multiculturalism inside.
‐ I would like to know‐‐ I would like to know
what a young black woman from Brooklyn
would do in a biosphere, huh?
‐ Nothing can get in, and nothing can get out.
I'm wondering‐‐I'm wondering how long they can last in there
without getting sick or something.
‐ Emily, you think you're gonna live in a place
like that someday? Yeah?
‐ This is an excellent model for the future,
but it won't work. People are too mean.
People are too abusive, yeah. People abuse our world.
Our world's going down the tubes.
‐ The Biosphere dazzles the eye.
There is no dispute about that.
But is it science?
‐ It is a great adventure.
And as adventure, you know, fine.
That's not science.
‐ University of Texas ecologist Bassett McGuire
and other scientists say
no matter what happens inside the Biosphere,
nothing will be proved, because the showy experiment
cannot be duplicated to double‐check results,
and they say the project combines too many unknowns.
‐ So, if this isn't science, what is it?
‐ Well, I like to describe Biosphere 2
as trendy ecological entertainment.
♪ ♪
‐ We were having
such a wonderful time in there,
and then this really shocking thing happened.
Jane Pointer put her hand into a grain threshing machine
without turning it off.
I actually remember unpacking the threshing machine
and finding the tip of her finger.
[string music]
‐ There was debate whether it would be
a breach of protocol for her to leave.
‐ Go out and see a hand surgeon...
‐ You mean I'd have to go out?
‐ [indistinct]
‐ We decided, okay,
if Jane eats nothing outside...
♪ ♪
Goes to the hospital in the ambulance with me,
I'm there the whole time
to make sure nothing non‐kosher happens,
and then we bring her back through the airlock.
[cheers and applause]
‐ Bye again!
‐ Bye again.
‐ And we thought it would be just a blip.
♪ ♪
‐ Biospherian Jane Pointer had to emerge briefly
for surgery on a finger.
It was later learned that she carried a duffel bag
full of supplies back in with her.
‐ I put some of the stuff in the bag.
You know, what could one say? What are you doing?
Bringing stuff in the Biosphere?
Bad news.
‐ And she came back with two duffel bags.
Computer parts, maybe an extra T‐shirt.
♪ ♪
It's a really interesting thing
to see how the media
suddenly made Biosphere 2 into a game show
where the only question was,
will eight people stay in there for two years,
and will everything work perfectly?
‐ Directors of the Biosphere 2 project
are defending themselves
against charges of public deception.
‐ In the forefront now is the question
of whether living
in this earthbound enclosed environment
is possible without a lot of help from the outside.
♪ ♪
‐ Once the negativity started, John was very upset and hurt.
‐ Don't show that, or I'm gonna do something.
‐ There was a lot of paranoia.
Margaret and John wanted to control the situation.
I told Margaret,
"Disclose everything and we'll be all right,"
but Margaret did not agree with this point of view.
‐ Margaret, I'd like to ask you something,
because from the tone of it, I'm a little surprised.
You're making it sound as though
this is part of normal procedure.
‐ Margaret and John started to become more secretive,
and this only reinforced
the idea that there was something to hide.
♪ ♪
‐ I tell you what was really stressful is,
when Jane got back in,
she was pretty much incapacitated.
We had to take up her farming work.
[serene music]
And I do remember, you know,
Roy, pretty early on, saying that he resented
that he didn't have as much time to do research
because he was taking part in farming chores.
♪ ♪
People are people, and, you know,
squabbling, and personality conflicts.
‐ Oh, for heaven's sake. ‐ Eek!
[indistinct] I dropped my shears.
‐ Don't get so excited you fall, Jane.
It's not worth it for a cockroach.
‐ What?
‐ Nobody knew what it would be like
to live with seven people for two years.
♪ ♪
‐ Nothing improved morale like a really good meal.
♪ ♪
We had no artificial sugar at all inside Biosphere 2,
so all of our birthday cakes were banana‐flavored.
♪ ♪
I was really proud of my birthday cakes,
because it was extremely difficult to make a cake
with no butter, a few eggs, hardly any oil, and no sugar.
♪ ♪
I knew that cake was gonna disappear in seconds.
♪ ♪
Banana was the best candidate to try and make wine.
I think the banana wine might have been good eventually,
but it never lived that long.
The minute it had alcoholic content,
that was it.
♪ ♪
[vocal music playing on radio]
♪ ♪
[upbeat music]
♪ ♪
[relaxed music playing]
♪ ♪
[gentle piano music]
♪ ♪
‐ I had this dream Biosphere 2 is starting to levitate.
It's starting to go into orbit,
and so I'm madly running,
and I'm saying, you know, the other seven,
we're all running to be the first people
to see the Earth from inside Biosphere 2.
♪ ♪
We were like an intrepid group of astronauts.
♪ ♪
We're on the Moon, or Mars.
♪ ♪
‐ I was outside looking in, working with mission control.
‐ Take a little tour around.
This is the computer room, the Telex room.
‐ Mission control was an entire team
recording the data from Biosphere 2.
‐ My office was in mission control,
on second floor, right down the hall from the CEO.
[synth music]
When you're doing the finance ends of things,
you're not a front person.
You're hidden behind the scenes.
♪ ♪
And I made it a purpose often to run around the Biosphere
most every day,
and look at it. That was my exercise.
That was my daily run.
♪ ♪
I‐‐yeah, I felt very, very connected
to everybody in there.
♪ ♪
‐ Every day, John was in mission control
monitoring the project.
People had different pressures on them
by the enormity of the project
and its profile in the media. John Allen‐‐
he's always thinking about the project itself,
thinking about every possible thing
that he thought could go wrong.
♪ ♪
‐ There was this mysterious thing that happened,
a sudden spike increase in CO2.
‐ I mean, it was a substantial rise
in carbon dioxide.
‐ I couldn't finish a long sentence
without stopping to take a breath or two.
‐ Walking up the steps,
I could only walk a couple steps,
and then I'd have to stop and take a breath.
‐ You know, the onset of winter
was kind of scary times.
♪ ♪
As the days got shorter, we were pretty scared, one,
that we couldn't control CO2.
Whereas food also got shorter, crops took longer to mature.
♪ ♪
‐ We had to make some pretty hard decisions,
because some crops were just way more productive
than others, even though we might have been
sick of eating that particular thing.
Beetroot soup, beetroot salad, and with a side of beetroot.
♪ ♪
Roy Walford, who was our doctor‐‐
his theory was that a low calorie diet
was the secret to longevity.
‐ Roy's whole thing was that if you did it intelligently,
you could half starve to death and live well to 120 years.
‐ And this was the perfect research opportunity for him.
♪ ♪
‐ I made this calculation. If this weight loss continues,
I will be ‐90 pounds when I leave.
[somber music]
♪ ♪
‐ We saw that the oxygen was really getting low,
to a point where it could cause brain damage,
and I think one of the reasons that our group of eight
were belligerent towards each other was,
we were suffocating and starving.
‐ Started out by fucking saying,
I'm staying down here, watching the creek.
♪ ♪
‐ The fighting is taking away from us coalescing
as a group to accomplish our objectives.
‐ John said, "Oh, you need to start
"doing some advanced yoga
so you don't use as much oxygen."
♪ ♪
I started to resent John Allen.
♪ ♪
‐ We had occasional meetings with John via video.
♪ ♪
There was a lot of personal animosities towards John.
♪ ♪
‐ John Allen controls who gets to communicate with whom.
‐ Mm‐hmm. ‐ And there are certain people
that I'm not supposed to talk to who are scientists,
who I would really like to talk to,
particularly about oxygen, and these are people
that I'm not supposed to talk with directly.
♪ ♪
‐ John‐‐he had created this whole world.
♪ ♪
Oh, I think a part of him,
like any red‐blooded white American male,
wanted that god‐like power.
♪ ♪
‐ This was [indistinct].
[actors hooting]
‐ Can the actors go on?
It's dramatic.
Nobody knows,
until the very end,
what was gonna happen.
‐ In our horrible situation,
we've been deprived of these basic needs.
‐ A horrible situation!
‐ It was an experiment to humans in a way.
‐ Eight people in the Biosphere.
Eight supple arms have I, one for each and eight for all,
as one by one they die.
[spacey music]
♪ ♪
‐ There were many times I would get calls
from reporters, saying "Is it true that..."
and I would say, "I don't think so, but I'll check,
and get back to you," and lo and behold, it was true.
[foreboding music]
♪ ♪
‐ Eyewitness News has learned there is a potential problem
at the Biosphere near Oracle.
Hours before that huge experiment was sealed,
Biosphere officials secretly installed a CO2 scrubber,
a mechanical device to remove CO2
from the atmosphere inside Biosphere.
‐ One of the top scientists resigned
over that added technology.
He and some others charge
it flies in the face of the original concept.
‐ A CO2 scrubber that was not divulged to the media
and the rest of the world
would seem to me to say
that they've changed the rules.
‐ There was so much to‐do made about inconsequential things,
like the famous carbon scrubber.
That could only take out a limited amount of CO2.
It wasn't gonna save us, and we used that sparingly.
But we needed to be
much more transparent with the outside world.
‐ Biosphere 2 is billed as a search for scientific truth,
but the principals behind it
seem to spend an awful lot of their time stonewalling.
‐ Biosphere officials turned down
our request for interviews.
We didn't have any better luck when we caught up
with one of those officials, John Allen,
and an aide, at a scientific conference in Alabama.
‐ Can you not answer our questions?
‐ Mister, sir, you've gotten‐‐ you've gotten the answer.
‐ I was tremendously frustrated
by the criticisms
and misunderstandings of Biosphere 2.
Everybody focused
on the carbon dioxide scrubber.
[eerie music]
People did not understand the point.
♪ ♪
We were people who recognized that climate change
is a threat,
trying to develop a means to counteract that threat.
♪ ♪
Biosphere 2 brings you a visceral sense
of how delicate everything is.
♪ ♪
‐ We were all tense. The project wasn't going right.
Things were falling apart. People were losing control.
Of course, when people feel like they're losing control,
bad things happen in all kinds of directions.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[overlapping reporting]
♪ ♪
[helicopter whirring]
♪ ♪
[somber music]
♪ ♪
‐ Thanks to the people that have volunteered
tremendous time and effort into this committee
to give advice on scientific matters to Biosphere 2.
‐ The science advisory committee
was established, funded scientists
from major institutions
that could give the project
the scientific credibility it was losing.
‐ Some other people started to be involved, to come in,
and I think
there was some conflicts going on in that arena.
‐ I can tell‐‐ wait a minute, this is‐‐
‐ [indistinct] ‐ Let me finish, please.
Please, let me finish.
‐ The scientific committee‐‐
they certainly would've been happy to take over
and use Mr. Bass's money
to do a very different version of Biosphere.
‐ One of the interesting things we're going to do,
I want to do next, is to look at the light.
‐ And clearly, John was upset.
He thought he was losing control.
♪ ♪
‐ I'm still very concerned about a matter of‐‐
‐ What did you just say?
‐ I'm saying we're gonna vet it.
‐ John called me in, then he said
the establishment is trying to take over,
and that Ed Bass had turned on him.
And I thought, wait a minute, John has turned on Ed,
it sounded like.
That set off alarms, to me.
♪ ♪
I felt like I had to say something
to the scientific advisory committee.
♪ ♪
‐ We were totally upset about Tony doing this
in such an underhanded way.
It was pretty much gossip‐mongering.
We asked Tony to come and face us all
on a video uplink,
and tell us what he had said to the advisory committee.
‐ I think what, the problem I saw was that John Allen
was having what looked like paranoid delusions,
and it frightened me.
‐ For you to take this kind of agenda
to that committee really burns me,
because to my mind, they have heard too much of this shit.
‐ I was really angry with Tony.
It was crazy to me.
Biosphere 2 was a genius of Johnny as a leader.
‐ I'm sensitive to this situation,
because I am the product of a dysfunctional family.
What I see going on here is abusive parents,
and you eight almost trapped in there like children.
‐ I'm just really quite pissed off,
because there's no way you can really respond
to personality conflict power projections,
or even as you're going on, you know,
abusive parent projections.
‐ Some of them were really angry.
It was a good thing they were inside and I was outside.
‐ Tony, if you talk about what John Allen said,
then I would John Allen to be part of the meeting.
‐ Then they took me to see John Allen.
♪ ♪
That one, I remember.
John looks at me, and he says,
"In Dante's 'Inferno,'
"betrayal is the sin that puts people
at the deepest level of hell."
♪ ♪
He got up,
walked around the desk,
and hugged me.
And I hugged him. And he said, "Never again."
And I looked him in the eye, and I said, "Never again."
[warm orchestral music]
♪ ♪
‐ As I look at Biosphere 2, and I'm ready to enter,
I take my last breaths of this atmosphere,
knowing that I will take breaths
from a different atmosphere from all of you for two years.
‐ Not exactly.
Biospherians are once again breathing our air.
It's being pumped inside.
About 10% of Biosphere's total atmosphere.
♪ ♪
From the beginning, Biosphere 2 was billed
as a totally contained, virtually sealed experiment.
Pumping air inside? What now?
♪ ♪
‐ If the management had handled things differently,
the result would've been different.
I actually don't blame the press.
Margaret and John promised too much.
‐ Theirs was to have been a self‐sustaining
three‐acre world, a model for colonizing space,
but crops failed. Fresh air was pumped in.
‐ Critics say these violations
have invalidated the experiment.
‐ It's self‐contained, but it's not self‐sustaining,
and so the Biosphere, as it was touted, is a total failure.
♪ ♪
‐ The day they pumped oxygen, people went down
to kind of, like, get a sniff of the pure oxygen coming in.
‐ In ten minutes, in ten seconds, maybe,
I felt decades younger, full of energy.
‐ Once this oxygen came in,
it was like this huge cloud had lifted.
‐ The first thing that happened,
spontaneously, is most of us
started running around the lung and laughing.
And I realized, I hadn't heard the sound
of running feet in months and months.
["Right Here Right Now" by Jesus Jones playing]
‐ The negativity just kind of dissipated.
‐ ♪ A woman on the radio talks about revolution ♪
♪ When it's already passed her by ♪
♪ Bob Dylan didn't have this to sing about ♪
♪ You know it feels good to be alive ♪
♪ I was alive, and I waited, waited ♪
♪ I was alive and I waited for this ♪
♪ Right here, right now ♪
♪ There is no other place I want to be ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Right here, right now ♪
♪ Watching the world wake up ♪
‐ I felt part of that living entity that was Biosphere 2.
My agriculture system was just becoming really good.
You know, it was maturing, things were working well,
and I wanted to see what was gonna happen next.
‐ Joe, as we said, Sunday's the big day.
The eight men and eight women who've been locked
inside this Biosphere will be coming out.
‐ Today, workers were scrubbing windows
and building a big stage, all in preparation for Sunday.
That's when the Biospherians exit this greenhouse,
exactly two years after they went in.
[gentle music]
♪ ♪
‐ What is it gonna feel like
after being two years in this world,
to suddenly step out into the other one?
‐ I didn't want to come out.
I did not want to come out. I was volunteering to stay in.
‐ So, it was amazing that from a dream
and an adobe spaceship,
that this gleaming marvel had appeared in the desert.
I had the adventure of my life.
‐ So, I'd look at the trees that we planted from seed,
and I just love it. Uh, it‐‐my heart is there.
It's really there.
It probably will always be there.
♪ ♪
‐ On the re‐entry day, we were all inside the Biosphere,
waiting and waiting,
waiting for Jane Goodall to finish her speech.
‐ When I began in 1960,
in the Gombe National Park in Tanzania,
my mentor, Louis Leakey, was told he was crazy.
He was told the mission would fail.
And I think there were many people,
when the Biosphere was first planned,
who predicted that this mission also would fail.
And I think one of the things we're here for today
is to pay tribute to the imagination and the vision
and the determination of the team of people
who have made this extraordinary project
a reality.
‐ Now, I love Jane Goodall, so we could all tolerate
the fact that she made us stay inside the Biosphere
probably an extra 20 minutes.
[fanfare]
♪ ♪
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
‐ To live in a small world
and be conscious of its controls,
of its beauty, its fragility, of its bounty,
and its limits, changes who you are.
[spacey music]
♪ ♪
‐ When you're out in what seems to be
almost this infinite biosphere,
so big, so large, so tall,
it's kind of easy to think that your actions don't count,
but they do count.
♪ ♪
‐ Today, researchers toured the inside of the facility,
measuring every living plant and examining every animal.
‐ Some things have grown, some things have died,
and some things have prospered.
‐ Did it go as expected?
‐ No, and that was why we did it.
We didn't know what to expect.
‐ I was back in the saddle, being the consultant
for the next mission. I was given trust again,
so they were true to their word.
I said never again.
They continued to pay me to collect data
that we thought was going to be the foundation
of this new discipline of biospherics.
So I was completely involved, all the way until that day
when the marshals showed up with Steve Bannon.
[uneasy music]
♪ ♪
‐ The management team of Biosphere 2
has been locked out of its offices and jobs.
‐ Texas billionaire Ed Bass, who bankrolled the Biosphere,
has obtained a court order
ousting six managing officers of the project.
Among those booted out: Margaret Augustine,
the company's chief executive officer,
and vice president John Allen.
‐ After some... intense meetings...
♪ ♪
It was decided that the relationship should...end
as it‐‐as it had been. It was very difficult.
♪ ♪
‐ Ed was under pressure to stop the bad press
and to make Biosphere 2 more conventional and profitable.
He brought in bankers and Wall Street types
who really were focused on short‐term profit and loss.
‐ John Polk Allen sent a letter to Ed Bass,
the project's financial backer,
because he's afraid the focus of the project
is changing from scientific research
to making money.
♪ ♪
‐ Steve Bannon came out of Goldman Sachs,
and Ed made Bannon CEO.
♪ ♪
‐ Most of the incredibly important data
from Biosphere 2
was destroyed or locked up somewhere.
It is a scientific crime.
♪ ♪
‐ Why? Why?
Why were they doing this?
What was this all about?
I was very dubious
whether or not what was happening was legal.
I continued to work under Steve Bannon.
I figured that it was very important
to capture what was going on.
♪ ♪
I put the tape recorder in my underwear
because I was concerned that somebody would try to find it.
♪ ♪
‐ The power of this place is allowing those scientists
who are really involved in the study of global change‐‐
this actually allows them to study and monitor
the impact of enhanced CO2 and other greenhouse gases
on humans, plants, and in animals.
‐ The focus was really one of space travel.
We refocused it to the study of the Earth.
[melancholy piano music]
♪ ♪
‐ If Bannon has denied climate change,
it is not because he is not smart enough
to see that there is climate change.
He's doing it for another reason.
♪ ♪
It's particularly excruciating
because I know how smart he is.
♪ ♪
‐ The takeover of Biosphere 2
is what's happening in the world now.
Wall Street banker types,
the people just interested in short‐term profit and loss,
push out the innovators and destroy the world.
♪ ♪
‐ Not to be able to go back
to something of that magnitude,
that's the culmination of your life's work,
was excruciating.
♪ ♪
I don't want to go there.
I don't want to talk about it.
Yeah.
Excuse me.
[mournful music]
♪ ♪
‐ I'm still moving on from that.
I'm still moving on.
♪ ♪
We're always looking for that place, the‐‐
you know, that was special.
Nobody else could see what it could be.
♪ ♪
We had more in mind to do.
♪ ♪
‐ Those moments of all possibilities
last a very short period of time.
That's why you act.
♪ ♪
‐ Biosphere 2, is it a cautionary tale?
We don't need a cautionary tale anymore,
because all of the rampant,
you know, destruction and death
is already happening.
I think it's important for me
to work on the scale that I work on now,
working with people in my community
to see what we can do.
♪ ♪
Sometimes beautiful, beautiful things happen
when people bring their minds together
towards a common goal.
You can't do it all by yourself.
♪ ♪
‐ I live at the ranch with quite a few of the people
that were there at the beginning.
♪ ♪
‐ And then cutting down...
‐ We're still managing the property
in the Australian outback, and the art gallery in London,
and the rain forest in Puerto Rico,
and we're rebuilding the "Heraclitus."
♪ ♪
We're a very high‐functioning family
that works through issues and keeps going
for 50 years.
[group talking indistinctly]
‐ That was because of you.
‐ That was because of you? ‐ Because I‐I‐‐
‐ These Americans
with their 200% American accents.
‐ If you can sustain a group like this,
it can get you through a lot of challenges.
‐ Yes. Oh.
‐ You keep going.
You go till you go, till you can't go.
♪ ♪
[pensive orchestral music]
♪ ♪